There's no such thing as the right time to do it. The best suggestion is to get clients that you can serve when you have the free time. Clients that are flexible. You can try going into a part time paid position that would free enough time to start servicing clients. Or just dive in. Too many people today are forced to become freelancers because the jobs are gone.
First thing first, you are not becoming a freelancer, you are starting a business. You have to apply all the business rules first or you’ll end up like most making the move to freelancer, broke, deep in debt and eventually out of business trying to get your old job back.
Learn to put together a solid and honest business plan, that should become your daily bible. There are many books and softwares that will help you do that. Also read some books on starting a small service business, there are plenty of those. Lastly take some courses on small business management and administration. Those are usually available as adult education in most communities. Also look up SCORE, (
www.score.org) they provide free consultation and they also conduct seminars.
What you’ll be hearing and reading will probably not go on very well; you should have at least 6 months, and preferably one year, of expenses set aside, some experts recommend two years. This because it will take long time, especially in this economy, for your business to come up to speed.
Next is marketing and that can vary from city to city. Freelancers to be successful must diversify their skills because you’ll never know what the next caller will need. Ask yourself, “can I handle successfully any type of assignment equally or better than my competitors?†You’ll never have a second change with a client. Screw up once or not provide what the client needs are and you are done.
Study your market and see where you can fit in. Remember that every market is over-saturated with freelancers looking for work and every potential client is bombarded with freelancers offering their services. Ask yourself this, “why should they hire me instead of them� If you are thinking about going in as the cheaper guy then plan for a short career, cheap will work only until somebody cheaper comes along; nobody wins the price game.
Study the clients and come up with innovative ways that you can help hem. Don’t ask them what they need, tell them what they need. You are not there to take their money, you are there to help them make more money; you are not a salesman, you are a solution.
Of course to be successful in doing this you should study and take classes on marketing and sales techniques.